


The Knight in Shining Armor from Across the Hall

by ifyouwerewater



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 08:04:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4599093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifyouwerewater/pseuds/ifyouwerewater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU in which Clarke Griffin and Octavia Blake live across the hall from Octavia’s older brother. Based on the second prompt from <a href="http://bellamyblaked.co.vu/post/126805812315/here-have-some-aus-as-if-there-arent-enough-on">this post</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Knight in Shining Armor from Across the Hall

By the time Octavia Blake realized she would be moving into the apartment across the hall from her older brother, Bellamy, she had already sent in the first month’s rent and security deposit. She blamed Clarke, her roommate, for not doing her research, and she blamed the restaurant where she’d been waitressing for giving her three double shifts the week before they closed. Before move in day, she’d only seen pictures of the interior and heard Clarke’s description of the rest of the building, but, still, she knew it sounded familiar, and just about too good to be true.

As it turned out, Bellamy’s job and Octavia’s schedule of classes (along with her waitressing job) had the two Blake siblings running on different schedules, so they only rode the elevator together a couple of times in the past few months. In fact, Bellamy hadn’t even been over to his sister’s apartment yet, and, consequently, hadn’t been formally introduced to her roommate.

He knew she was the one with the bright blue eyes and the bright blonde hair, the one who seemed considerably less bright than her features implied when he found her slumped against his door, wearing sweatpants and sunglasses, holding a cup of hot coffee and mumbling “my key doesn’t work, I think I broke it” after she rang his doorbell seventeen times.

She realized her mistake approximately the second he spoke his first word to her (“uh…”), and looked up at him apologetically (“oh, um, my bad”) before crawling across the hall to her _actual_ door, coffee and sunglasses in hand, and slouching against it. He took pity on her, as any fellow human would, and disappeared for a moment so he could rummage through a little basket by his front door that contained rubber bands, loose change, paper clips, old receipts, and – there it was – his spare key to Octavia and Clarke’s apartment. When he re-entered the hallway, Clarke was standing with her back to him and her forehead against the wall beside her apartment. He coughed slightly and she looked up at him, watching him unlock the door and giving him a close-mouthed smile.

“You must be the brother, then,” she said as she stepped inside and put her sunglasses down on some surface he couldn’t quite see.

“And you’re the roommate, I hope.”

She let out a half-hearted laugh, more like an exhale, and nodded. “So, uh. Thanks.”

In response he cleared his throat awkwardly and turned back towards his apartment as he heard her door close behind him.

That first meeting made their next encounter only slightly less uncomfortable, considering the state Bellamy was in: both shaken _and_ stirred, banging on his sister’s door and shouting “O! O, I need your help!”

Bellamy Blake had a spider in his bathtub. And not just any spider – a _huge fucking spider_. Butt naked, standing in his bathroom, about to turn on the hot water, he made the mistake of looking directly up, right at the corner of his ceiling. And there, in that very ceiling corner, the largest spider web he had ever seen caught the light at just the right angle. As he followed one dangling string down, down, down, he saw movement in his peripheral vision and turned his head slowly so as to avoid disturbing the monstrous creature that cast a shadow over his entire (still naked) body. Or at least that’s what it felt like, and he wasn’t going to stick around to get a closer look. He backed up, all the way out of the room, and closed the door, setting up a wall of history textbooks and Greek plays in front of it to prevent anything from getting out from underneath.

He sat on his bed and tried to figure out how to continue. He put on his boxers. He moved himself even further from the bathroom and its contents by relocating to the living room couch. He grabbed a hoodie that was draped over one of the chairs at the kitchen table. He knew what to do.

Octavia was the only one who could help him now.

So Bellamy rose from the couch and made his way towards the door, all the while watching the floor and walls carefully, just in case The Creature from the Bathtub had a family and they’d all chosen to inhabit the place he called home. He would probably let them win, because he was against confrontation. At the very least he was very against confrontation with arachnids and other such six-plus-legged creatures, winged and unwinged alike.

He grabbed his keys and a flip flop (for safety, if The Creature from the Bathtub managed to break down the door and follow him out) and took the five step trek to the apartment across the hall. So there he was, shouting for his sister’s help, standing barefoot in the hallway wearing only his boxers and a pullover sweatshirt, when Clarke “The Blonde with a Hangover” Griffin appeared in the doorway, looking exceptionally bright – bright enough to match her hair and her eyes. It was a nice look, actually.

“The brother!” she beamed.

He beamed back. “The roomie!”

Clarke stuck out her hand. “They call me Clarke.”

“Bellamy.”

“Cool.” They stood there together, beaming and motionless, until she gestured towards the flip flop. “Um, you were saying something about needing your sister’s help?”

He snapped out of his minor daze and leaned to look past her and through the door. “Yeah, I’m having a problem, is she home?”

“Not at the moment. Anything I can help you with?”

She looked so eager, and he was so desperate that he couldn’t say no to her offer, even if they’d really only ever exchanged casual nods in the lobby. He cringed, knowing how awkward it was, but through clenched teeth he finally managed the words: “How are you with spiders?”

The laugh that followed was so free that he couldn’t possibly come up with a better word for her than _bright_. Whatever else she was, first and foremost, she was shining. And it made him feel like he was shining, too, just by standing there in front of her.

“Spiders in what capacity?”

“The – um, in the killing them capacity?”

Again, the laugh; again, the shining.

“I’m your girl.”

“Brave princess.”

She scoffed. “Please, you’re the only princess here. I’m going to rescue your ass from the fire breathing spider and then I’m gonna steal you away to my tower – oh.” She scrunched up her face, clearly embarrassed. “I didn’t – the implications were, like, completely unintentional. You can, uh, stay away from my tower, it’s, um. It’s kind of a mess, anyway.”

Bellamy laughed. “Don’t worry about it. Can we save my ass now?”

She cleared her throat. “Definitely.”

Clarke closed the door behind her and reached for Bellamy’s keys, motioning for him to get behind her as they crept over in super slow motion. She unlocked his door and tossed the keys back at him, which he caught effortlessly – they were already working well together. The keys went back in the basket.

“Where is it?” she asked, and he pointed to the closed bedroom door.

“There’s a tub in the bathroom through there.”

Clarke nodded curtly and the look in her face proved that she meant business.

“Come with me,” it was not a request. Then, softer: “And Bellamy, bring flip flops.”

He left and reappeared beside her just as she began to remove the first brick (book) of the wall (makeshift barrier). He was completely still, slightly embarrassed that this was causing so much adrenaline to move through his veins, and sure that The Creature from the Bathtub would pop out any moment in a carefully calculated surprise attack. The last book had been removed. This was it. Bellamy turned the knob and Clarke counted down from three on her fingers. The second she was done, Bellamy ripped open the door and Clarke was a mess of flying limbs – one pair of Bellamy’s too-large flip flops on her feet, which were stomping and jumping around all over the floor, and another pair attached to her hands, which were smacking at everything else: the tub, the walls, and the shower curtain.

Then they looked up. There it was, lowering itself down the wall closest to them. And then it stopped. At optimal flip flop hand level for both of them. Clarke moved her hand in towards her target when Bellamy held her hand back. “My bathroom, my responsibility,” he muttered, using the same serious, no-nonsense tone Clarke had used moments before.

Their eyes met. “Together,” he said, and she nodded. Without any cue, they went for the spider at the exact same moment. It was stuck to the shoe Clarke had been holding, so she walked away from him, scraped the spider corpse into the toilet with a tissue (or three) and flushed it down.

By the time she reached her apartment again, she was at peak brightness. “See you later, princess,” she said from her doorway, and he smiled from where he stood in his.

“Thanks for being my knight in shining armor,” he replied. “I’d love to see your tower some time.” He winked. She laughed.

“May we meet again!” She said, and turned on her heel, still laughing.

And that laughter followed him everywhere for the rest of the day, even at night, even in his dreams, and everything was bright and everything was shining and everything was her name, because he knew it now. Clarke Griffin.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my two lovely betas from tumblr: bellarkesupernova and goldenheadfreckledheart!!


End file.
